Pay attention, dilettantes: it's Putting Stuff in Perspective week in showbiz again, as Cheryl Cole does Helmand. The singer and deposed X Factor judge has undertaken a mission to Camp Bastion at the behest of the Daily Mirror, and is exclusively pictured in combat gear on a front page they have disappointingly declined to headline "Delta farce".

Apparently, the Fight For This Love legend joined a staged gun battle and got in a tank and fired a cannon and stuff – but you'll be glad to hear she didn't shirk her nation-building obligations. "Cheryl also took part in a traditional shura," we learn, "where soldiers sit down with village elders to discuss problems." Mm. I wish I didn't have a mental image of Cheryl taking the hand of a bearded gentleman and telling him soulfully: "I really believe in you and I think your appeal for electricity has what it takes to be absolutely massive." Perhaps as one last throw of the dice, before we leave Afghanistan to its own improvised explosive devices, we should try assigning celebrity mentors to its various factions. I'd give Tulisa the Quetta Shura, while poor old Louis Walsh would probably be stuck with the Afghan local police.

Anyway, back to Cheryl, and the nagging question with these celebrity military missions: do they increase respect for the work the proper soldiers are doing? There is no question that on the ground, Cheryl's presence is a morale-booster for servicemen and women. And were it confined to that locale, then that would be that. But isn't the manner in which the visit is hyped to the wider world the opposite of morale-boosting? Cast your eyes over the spread of nine photos of a heavily false-eyelashed Cheryl looking down the sights of a sniper's rifle, or taking part in a mock raid and so on, and ask whether they do not, in fact, trivialise life on the front line to a degree that would be hilarious were it not so distasteful.

Thus the visit, which would have been just as morale-boosting had it happened off-camera, is eclipsed by the more insistent public relations message – namely, that Cole knows how far behind "our boys" a little old pop star like her comes in the rankings of jobs that actually matter. It is an exercise in performative humility that doesn't quite come off.

Lost in Showbiz suspects she is less responsible for this unfortunate misfire than her publicist, or the Daily Mirror team that persuaded her to undertake the tour of duty, but the effect is the same. Witness the paper reporting breathlessly that although Cheryl only arrived at the base at 2am, "she was up just five hours later" – which is all very impressive, but begs the supplementary: "Did she have her leg blown off two hours after that? Or are we just saluting her for only having five hours' sleep?"

It was not ever thus. Celebrities famously entertained the troops in wars past, but the nation was spared the sight of Betty Grable manning a Browning Automatic, or of Gracie Fields pretending to besiege a Third Reich bunker, for all that both women undertook genuinely dangerous entertainment missions. One can't help feeling that those were rather more seemly times. These days, such exercises appear less about the immediate audience of soldiers than the wider public, with the overriding impression being that only when war is given a celebrity angle will it hold our attention. And so it was that while hundreds of combat missions can go unmentioned, a Sun report from a few years back revealed a military helicopter carrying Myleene Klass to a base in Afghanistan had been "targeted by the Taliban". Targeted, if you please – as though the evildoers had lain in wait with the specific aim of taking out an erstwhile member of Hear'Say.

We mercifully haven't the space to revisit Geri Halliwell's 2001 concert in Oman for troops who would shortly be deployed to Afghanistan, but we shall leave a summary to the army officer who told reporters: "The woman is a nightmare. It has been quite an eye-opener trying to look after her and cater for her every demand. Where are we supposed to find soya milk from here?" It subsequently transpired that the MoD had forked out tens of thousands of pounds in "expenses" for Geri, and that soldiers were banned from taking pictures at the event in order to protect revenues from future film rights. Vera Lynn was publicly aghast.

But on it goes, this uneasy commingling of patriotism and publicity, with Cheryl's alma mater – The X Factor – developing closer ties with the military every series. The 10 finalists releasing a joint single for Help for Heroes is now a set piece, as are the accompanying interviews in which adequately talented 16-year-olds graciously correct the public's misconceptions and inform them "these guys are the real heroes".

Even wannabe contestants have got wise to the show's military fetish now, realising the mere mention of service gets you a bye into boot camp. (Incidentally, the term "boot camp" itself has undergone a semantic recalibration, and now primarily denotes the period between the X Factor auditions and the live shows, as opposed to a training academy for military recruits.) Last week, a "singing soldier" larded his opening comments with references to Afghanistan – he's never actually gone – while viewers were shown several snaps of him in uniform accompanied by the obligatory mawkish soundtrack, and encouraged to appreciate the sledgehammer irony of his "being more scared of going before the X Factor judges than of going to Afghanistan". He would win it for comrades who had fallen in Afghanistan, he has said, adding that his furtherance in the contest would be "the biggest morale-boost" to those currently out there. By that stage, he could have farted the Strictly Come Dancing theme and been sent through.

The X Factor is becoming almost like America's NFL, whose relationship with the military has become so weirdly symbiotic that flypasts before each game come as standard, the league's flagship show has been broadcast from a military base, and forces recruiters set up shop outside stadiums. Perhaps the British army could do the same, and set up its stall by the X Factor audition queue.

Then again, perhaps the show is merely war by other means, tomorrow's way of nation-building. As Simon Cowell once said of the format's international success: "The great thing is when you start seeing it in places like China and Afghanistan. It's democracy. We've kinda given democracy back to the world." What can you say? We must wish Cheryl the best of luck getting deployed in another liberation format.